There is a wide variety of tuners and metronomes on the market, and you'd be hard-pressed to find one that really doesn't do the basic job. A lot will come down to availability and aesthetics, but there are some which do a specific job for a specific setting.
One thing to consider is the ability to calibrate tuners to a pitch other than A=440 – you don't want to get stuck with one that doesn't when you're providing ad hoc continuo guitar for a passing gut-string band. There are also clip-on tuners suitable for all sorts of instruments, with specialised attachments.
Recommended as ‘best-value, reliable and inexpensive’ by MT regular Al Summers is Pure Tone's PTN101411 clip-on tuner, which works for guitar, ukulele, violin and similar stringed instruments, and can be calibrated to other than concert pitch. It's supplied to the trade by Music Sales, and so is available from almost every UK music shop including the Music Room group.
At the other end of the scale is Korg's Sledgehammer PRO clip-on tuner (£29, www.gear4music.com), which, says Summers, is ‘very accurate, if not downright fussy’.
And of course, there is still the reliable old tech: ‘I still use my tuning fork,’ says Summers. ‘In 45 years it's never needed a battery replacement!’
Snark Super Tight
Snark's Super Tight clip-on tuner has both a mic and a vibration sensor, making it suitable for all types of instrument so long as there's somewhere you can clip it. It has a rotatable display, has transpose and pitch calibration features, and includes a tap metronome as well. www.snarktuners.com
TC Electronic PolyTune 2
This stompbox tuner for electric guitars (£53, www.amazon.co.uk) allows, as the name suggests, tuning of multiple strings at once – as they say, ‘It really is as simple as strum – tune – rock!’. It has an LED display which auto-adjusts to the ambient light – good for daytime busking and night-time gigging – and several tuning modes, for standard, drop-d and capo tunings. www.tcelectronic.com
Boss TU-3
The Boss TU-3 (£66, www.dawsons.co.uk) is the successor to 1998's TU-2, ‘the world's top-selling stage tuner’, says Boss. The new model improves accuracy, and adds a green ‘Accu-Pitch’ LED to confirm accurate tuning, and has an extra-bright mode for outdoors or stage-lit environments. It can also provide power for up to seven Boss compact effects pedals. www.boss.info
D’Addario NS Micro Soundhole Tuner
Designed for acoustic guitars, D’Addario's NS Micro (£19.90, www.dawsons.co.uk) fits discreetly in the instrument's soundhole, using the soundboard's vibrations to tune. It can be calibrated so that A is 435-455HZ. www.daddario.com
Korg AW-LT100M/T/V
Korg designs a range of tuners specifically for orchestral instruments: the AWLT100T is designed specifically for trumpet and trombone, the AW-LT100V for violin and viola, and the AW-LT100M is aimed at a range of instruments (all £34 at www.gear4music.com). A can be calibrated to a range of 410-480 Hz, and the tuner has a continuous battery life of around 100 hours (you'd really hope to be in tune after all that). ‘Fast’ and ‘slow’ modes allow for spot-tuning in performance and specific work on tuning in long notes, for example. www.korg.com
Korg TM-60
Korg's tuner-metronome combo is suitable for a huge range of instruments, detecting from C1 to C8, and can be calibrated for A=410hz-480hz. It also has a larger screen than its predecessor, allowing the tuner and metronome functions to be displayed simultaneously. The metronome has a range from 30 to 252 beats per minute, and several different tempo and rhythm variations. Overall, says Korg, ‘you'll be able to use practising techniques that are idiomatic to orchestral instruments, such as keeping a consistent pitch over the course of a long note while varying the tone to add vibrato in time with the tempo’. With an input for the separately-sold CM-200 contact mic, this could be everything you need in a musical gadget. www.korg.com
John Walker Tuning Fork A=440
With a battery life of infinity, this tuning fork (£9.99, www.musicroom.com) has a single tuning feature, ringing out at a pure 440hz after a single skull-thwack or table-bash. A tried and tested classic that will never let you down. Also available at other frequencies.
APPY GO LUCKY
Alongside the hardware, there are also a number of tuning apps available for smartphones and tablets, which use the device's internal microphone. These include Fender Tune and Boss Tuner, both available free from the App Store and Google Play.
Fender's app was first launched for Apple devices in 2016, followed by Android in January last year, and works for tuning guitars, bass guitars and ukuleles. It has an ‘auto tune’ mode, which detects the note played and guides players to tuning, string by string; and a ‘manual’ mode which plays samples of each note, string-by-string.
The Boss Tuner app allows for multi-instrument tuning style and mimics the TU-3 pedal tuner (see left). It has a range of A?0 to G8, and claims a tuning accuracy of +/−1%. But we can't vouch for the battery life of MT readers’ phones, of course!
